


Love at First Shot

by ExquisitelyExplicit



Series: Budapest and After [1]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassins, Budapest, F/M, Headcanon, Headcanon Accepted, I Will Go Down With This Ship, SHIELD, Shipping, What Happened in Budapest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 11:18:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1385680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExquisitelyExplicit/pseuds/ExquisitelyExplicit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well.... What did happen in Budapest?</p><p>Alt title: A Game of Inches</p><p>(Currently a one-shot, might be extended into an actual story someday. For now, just enjoy the fluff, 'kay guys?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love at First Shot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dreaming_in_Circles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreaming_in_Circles/gifts), [Other People not on This Website Whose Names I Don't Want to Post Online](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Other+People+not+on+This+Website+Whose+Names+I+Don%27t+Want+to+Post+Online).



> I swear.  
> A lot.  
> .....sorry, not really sorry.

The bullet landed six inches away from the dead center of his face, and barely three from his cheek. He lay on his back on top of the pulverized rubble, breathing slowly, trying not to hyperventilate and draw attention to himself. There was a man lying adjacent to him on the ground, not quite dead yet. His foot moved, twitching, against Clint’s leg.  
Slowly, he raised himself into a sitting position. “I fucking _told_ you, agent, you were supposed to go _left_!” She clicked a new clip into her gun and pulled the slide so a bullet rose up into the chamber. The set of handcuffs he had tried to restrain her with were hanging off one wrist—she had been in too much of a hurry to take it off both.  
Slowly, Clint rose to his feet, eyes scanning the ground for his missing bow. He soon found it and lunged for the weapon, snatching it up and holding it tightly to his chest. “I knew exactly where I was going, Romanov. This _is_ the right way for us to have come.”  
“The _right_ way doesn’t typically include and ambush from a lot of ex-KGB agents.”  
Clint coughed slightly and glanced around at the carnage. Not every dead man was gone from an arrow, he saw. And Natalia Romanov was still standing there, dirt and dust and grime smudged across her face, her brilliant red curls tumbling over one shoulder. “You didn’t kill me.”  
She shrugged and tucked her gun away, even as he blatantly watched. “And you didn’t kill me. I think we’re probably even now.” He had heard her speak before with perfectly unaccented English, yet her native Russian showed clearly through her words at that moment She inched closer to him with a strange gait, rolling her hips slightly as she walked.  
He crossed his arms tightly across his chest, holding the bow like a talisman against her charms, refusing to allow himself to be distracted.  
“You wouldn’t _really_ put me in jail, would you, Agent Barton?” she asked, her voice low and purring.  
“You killed people!”  
“I didn’t kill you!”  
He sighed and took her by the arm, directing her back towards the van. She hid her grin when he didn’t replace the cuffs—though he didn’t remove the one that still hung off her left wrist. She sighed after a moment. “You know, agent, I think we’ve reached that point.”  
“What point, Romanov?”  
“You should definitely call me Natasha now.”  
She was gratified to see him flush and blink, harried.

“The council—”  
“The council be damned, she’s a good asset. You said so yourself in every report you’ve made on her,” Fury replied. Quickly, he pulled his files from the table into a stack and dumped them into the passing arms of the nearest level two agent.  
“She’s also dangerous.”  
“And what if she weren’t? She’d be no fucking good to us then!”  
“So you’re gonna let a possibly rogue enemy agent out of lock up, train her up, arm her with United States military grade weaponry, and release her out into the world?”  
“No.” Fury grinned. “ _You_ are.”


End file.
